SysInternals Shift to One Microsoft Way, Redmond

When former Dr. Dobb's columnists and Windows Kernel experts - Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell - formed a company called "NT Internals" (as in "Windows NT"), Microsoft objected to their use of the NT moniker and so they had to change the company name to Sysinternals and Winternals.

Ironically, Microsoft today acquired Sysinternals and Winternals, that are the brains behind some of the best free utilities for Windows like Process Explorer, FileMone and Regmon.

This is probably an exciting development for Microsoft and the entire Windows community - the software tools will gain better visibility and acceptance once they are available on the Microsoft Download Center and the system utilites may eventually be integrated with the upcoming Windows Vista OS.

Russinovich is the same expert who discovered the infamous rootkit software distributed with Sony CDs for which Sony was titled the Worst Company of the Year 2006 by PCWorld.

While most of the Sysinternals utilities are expected to survive in the future, Microsoft may not be very pleased with the BlueScreen Screen Saver that mocks the BSOD famous in previous version of Microsoft Windows.

Video Tour of Sysinternals Tools & Utilities